liberty’s before lunchtime

January 11, 20252 Comments

While in London last month I took a day to sketch and explore Mayfair, and area I have not really walked around in a long, long time. It’s good to not stick to the same places each time I go back. However I wanted to start my day somewhere more familiar, draw a lot of old timbered beams, and maybe do a bit of Christmas shopping along the way. I have sketched Liberty’s of London before, but it was a long, long time ago, when I drew smaller snippets of buildings, and in that case not very well. It’s such a big old building, a massive department store in mock-Tudor behind Oxford Circus station, that you want to spend the time to really catch all the details. I chose a spot on Great Marlborough Street that looked down Kingly Street on the right, a street well worth a day of detailed sketching in itself (but which I always associate with fancy bars and cozy pubs, having spent a few evenings down there with friends back in the old days either drinking cool cocktails among media types or room-temperature beer among tourists). It’s an intriguing little corner of the sketch that, like a window that you open on an advent calendar. There’s a fun idea for an advent calendar, one that for each window, you are taken to a new place full of other windows. I’m not sure how it would work but I can imagine quite a bit. The sun was blue and the sky was shining, there were clouds dotted about to make it more interesting for me when I drew the little triangle of colour on the top left. I wasn’t sure how much colour I would add to this drawing, it being an essentially black and white building, so I just added spots here and there, such as the golden parts (with my gold gel pen) and flags. Unfortunately I did not colour all the trees in, just putting in some green, the uncoloured ones were purple. I should have added that, I’m not averse to colouring-in later after all (I’m the king of colouring-in later, saves so much time on those days of exploration), but I never got around to it and the moment’s passed. Purple is very much the corporate colour for Liberty’s, though at this time they were also very invested in green as they were promoting the movie ‘Wicked’, and had large displays about it in their windows and interior. The whole sketch took me about an hour and fifty minutes (yes not quite two hours, I was determined to finish by midday and press a hard stop, though I spent some time faffing about taking pictures of it). I did go inside and look around, bought some Christmas ornaments and stocking stuffers in their amazing festive department on the top floor. I don’t remember ever walking around here before, it’s very wooden and unusual inside, well worth a look. Some of the things they have for sale are a bit expensive mind, the designer goods. I’d like to make a point of sketching more of the big old department stores of London, I drew Fortnum’s already, now Liberty’s. I tried to draw Harrod’s last year but it was covered over with scaffolding (to hide their shame presumably, given news reports about their former owner) and then there’s Selfridges on Oxford Street. I always took that for granted, but when I passed by it later on this day I remembered how absolutely immense it is, so I’ll leave that for another time.

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I could have spent the day sketching just around this little corner, looking across Regent Street with this winter sunlight hitting things just right. Carnaby street is nearby, but I don’t like it there much any more, it’s too bland, and there are just not any football shirt shops any more. The best was SoccerScene, a shop that did more than anything to enflame my lifelong obsession with interesting foreign football teams and their shirts (and their metal pin badges, they had a huge array of those). I remember further down Great Marlborough Street there used to be a fantastic foreign language bookshop, the best one in London, and when I was in college I spent a lot of time there looking at all sorts of interesting books in French, German, Italian, Danish, whatever was tickling my linguistics at the time. It’s gone now. Grant and Cutler, that was it. It seems they have merged with Foyles and have a section of that massive bookshop on Charing Cross Road, but I miss the feel of that other place. Anyway I was wasting time reminiscing in nostalgia again, I had to go to Mayfair.

I’ll put the Mayfair sketches in another post, it’s only fair, but this is another timbered building that I drew next, the Mason’s Arms on Maddox Street. It’s opposite a really interesting church which I’ll draw another time called St. George’s Church Hanover Square. This is across Regent Street, and I came across here rarely, probably feeling that this part of town was not for oiks like me from Burnt Oak. People get progressively richer with each passing square foot. I think I only had about a square foot of pavement to sketch on, the streets were a little tight, probably why they’re so rich eh. All the old tour guide jokes coming out now. I remember going down Regent Street on the bus once talking about Soho when an American tourist asked me why it was called Soho and is it named after the SoHo in New York. I said no it isn’t, that area is a contraction of ‘South of Houston’, whereas the one in London is ‘South of Hoxford Street’. After finishing my sketch of the Mason’s I popped in to sit down and grab a drink. I ended up not eating, saving my appetite for the Mercado in Mayfair which was my destination, but it was a nice little pub, historic (1721, though rebuilt as it looks now in 1934 in that Mock Tudor style; a new Lego set has just come out which reminds me of this, I might have to get it). The Rolling Stones had offices on Maddox Street and used to record at Chappell Studios a few doors down, as did the Beatles occasionally. It’s good to read the signs on the pub wall.

a few more corners of London

July 22, 2024July 22, 2024Leave a comment

Before I dive into my sketches from the south of France, here are a few more London corners that I caught between doing other things. Above, a quick sketch of Neal’s Yard, while my family were looking through shops in Covent Garden, I decided to pop in here to draw. It was nice watching people move by, tourists getting an ice cream, people out enjoying the June afternoon. It was warming up. One weird bloke came through yelling obscenities at random people, though not to me thankfully. After sketching, I headed to my favourite map shop Stanfords.

Above, a quick sketch of De Hems, a well-known old Dutch pub in London’s Soho. I was meeting my friend here on a busy Saturday evening, we were watching the opening game of the Euros, Scotland v Germany. Alas, Scotland lost big time. I think the Dutch in there were for Scotland mostly, but it was a convivial atmosphere with Scottish and Germans together. As full-time blew though, the pub did decide to play The Proclaimers ‘Letter From America’, bit of a low blow given they’d just been beaten 5-1 without I think an actual shot on target (their goal was an own goal). The Scottish fans were popular in Germany though, as in most places they play well with the locals, unlike a lot of times when England play abroad. My friend and I stayed in the pub for a good long time and an old catch-up, with plenty of beers along the way. Central London has always been busy on a Saturday night, but I’m not wrong in feeling that it seems a lot busier than it used to years ago. I mean, better than during the Covid years of course, but still it felt pretty crowded. Summertime though, footballs on, weathers nice, good time to be alive I think.

The last one is a quick sketch I did while we were down in Spitalfields, my family and I had just eaten lunch in Spitalfields market (a much trendier and modern place than the old Spitalfields Market used to be), and were looking around shops and stalls, so I popped out to the street and did a quick sketch of the Ten Bells pub with Christchurch Spitalfields behind it. It was a hot day, and I just wanted to draw quickly and sketchily in pencil, and just added in a couple of colours for a fun effect. After this we walked down to the Classic Football shirts store to look at some great old kits, have a cold drink, and wander up Brick Lane looking for murals and public art. London’s great.

bar italia – round the corner in soho

September 1, 2023September 1, 2023Leave a comment

Looking back to London, this is the famous Bar Italia, a cafe on Frith Street in the heart of Soho. I drew this as part of two pieces I out in to the Pence Gallery’s annual Art Auction, deciding I really wanted to put in a place that meant a lot to me. Well, Soho means a lot to me, not necessarily Bar Italia, given that the last time I actually had anything here was in the mid-1990s. I just love that it is still here, still very much keeping Old Soho alive in the face of all the dross and change in this area. I drew it on an 8″x10″ piece of paper and framed it, I was really pleased with how it turned out. That might be me sat in the corner, wearing what looks like a Charleroi shirt (lot of Italians lived in Charleroi), but not exactly representative of when I would actually go there. For one thing, it’s daylight, and another, I don’t drink coffee. Bar Italia was a great place to go at about 3 or 4 in the morning, after going to whatever small Soho nightclub that played indie or rock music, and have a cold soda or even a cappuccino. I knew some Italians back then and we’d sometimes go there in those wee hours and those were the only times I ever had cappuccino, and the cappuccino in Bar Italia was really good. I can’t stand coffee, but that was nice. It was more the location, filled with interesting people, Soho people, all that little bit still awake and alive before the night bus home. In summertime the sky would already be streaked with early morning pink, as you walked down to Trafalgar Square to get the N5 from outside the National Gallery with the rest of the world. In those days I had boundless energy; if I stayed up all night, I wouldn’t even notice. I definitely had the odd occasion when I would be up all night, then rater than sleep I would just shower, have breakfast and then go off to work my day job in the Asda coffee shop. When you’re 20, you can do anything. I was a sensible 20 year old though, not very hedonistic, but I loved London. I remember going off to Germany when I was 20, to spend a year working in a school for children with disabilities, a live-in job I found so difficult and stressful that I ended up leaving, and coming home again. Mostly I just missed London. The world out there was great, but London, and this London especially, was just the best place. I’ve long since left it behind now, and found a new life in California. Pulp famously ended their Different Class album with the song ‘Bar Italia’, dedicated to this old Italian cafe, including the line “I’m fading fast, and it’s nearly dawn”. When a man is tired of London, it’s time for the Night Bus. This building, 22 Frith Street, has a longer history though, as the blue plaque indicates. This is where John Logie Baird first demonstrated his new invention, the ‘television’, back in 1926. That caught on didn’t it. Further up Frith Street is Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club – and I’ve never actually been there. When i was in my late teens and 20s, jazz clubs were not really my thing. Maybe some day I might go, and pop into Bar Italia afterwards.

This drawing will be in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction this year; details are at: https://pencegallery.org/events/art-auction/. There’ll be a Preview Exhibit on September 8th if you’re in Davis, and bidding starts on Sept 10 through Sept 23, when the Art Auction Party takes place at the gallery, always fun, and there are loads of great artists involved this year.

a thousand things i wanna say to you

August 12, 20221 Comment

I had a big grin on my face when I got out of the tube at Holborn and started wandering about the streets I always knew so well, but are now thousands of miles away. I always feel so comfortable being back in this old place, sure it’s crowded and the city air makes your throat scratchy, sure so many things have changed lately, and what’s with all the big new tall buildings, but it’s still London. I stopped along Long Acre in Covent Garden and drew the Sun Tavern pub (below), which is a pub I’m not even sure I’ve ever actually been to, there are so many around there, I wasn’t a regular to any. In Covent Garden I mostly spent time in art shops (well, one specific art shop) and map shops (well, one specific map shop) (both of which I visited again on this same morning). The scene above, that isn’t in Covent Garden but just off nearby Leicester Square, on the corner of Leicester Place and Lisle Street, as you enter Chinatown. The cinema on the corner is a proper London icon, the Prince Charles Cinema, which is beloved in London as a place to watch films that are out of circulation from the general commercial cinema circuit, so you might catch old movies here or runs by a certain director, movie marathons, occasionally new films, but often classics (as I write, August 12, I see that they are showing Pulp Fiction tonight, me and my wife still love that film) – I remember years ago (mid-90s) coming here to watch a late night screening of The Godfather Part II, which is so long it needed an intermission, and didn’t finish until after 1:00am (that’s Night Bus territory, as all Londoners know, which in 1996 meant a pretty long wait for the N5 on Charing Cross Road, I would eat greasy fried chicken while waiting in the cold). The Prince Charles also did singalongs to classic musicals, “Sing-along-a-Sound-of-Music” was popular on a Friday night, people would dress up, and I did go to see the long-running sing-and-dance-along to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, they showed that here for years. I think they are doing Sing-along-a-Grease soon – by the way, rest in peace Olivia Newton John – and Sing-along-a-Dirty Dancing too, both of which were well played and well sung-along to in our house growing up, not by me but by my two sisters. I wish we had a Prince Charles Cinema in Davis, it’s one of the places I miss most from London.

Below is the St. Moritz Swiss restaurant on Wardour Street. Wardour Street was one of my favourite roads in London, I always seemed to end up somewhere there back in the 90s. The St. Moritz has been there for ages. While I never ate at the restaurant, I did go regularly to the St. Moritz club next door (or underneath, Soho nightclub geography always confused me). It was tiny, but the music was always good. I remember I knew one of the DJs who worked a club night there, it was a good hangout. I remember one night out there, I was studying French at university and really had to finish my book by the next day, I think it was Le Pere Goriot or something, I’m sitting there reading with a beer in the dim light while everyone in the club was dancing to the Stone Roses or something, it’s a funny memory. I never finished the book – well, no, I did, I definitely got to the end, but I do remember skipping long bits. I recall trying to read it on the night bus too, eating greasy fried chicken, and still reading it next morning on the tube down to Mile End on my way to class. I had a lot more energy in those days. As I drew this, it was a Saturday afternoon and there were a lot of Hen parties about (Bachelorette parties, as Americans would call them), groups of women (many in costumes) going from place to place enjoying their Saturday, and a few did stop by as I was drawing to say “Wow! That’s lovely!”. Soho has a real buzz to it, it’s an interesting neighbourhood, being both party central and local residential area, it has always had a community spirit to it. Soho is changing, no question, and isn’t the Soho I remember from the 90s, but it still makes me smile. I used to dream about drawing the whole of Soho, capturing it all before changes swept through, and while the most interesting Soho is gone, some of it is still there if you look.

Also on Wardour Street, a pub I used to enjoy going to the most (they always played good rock music in there): The Ship, which is not far from the St. Moritz, on the other side of the street. It’s a little cleaner in there now but hasn’t changed that much, the toilets are still pretty tight (no chance of social distancing in there), and I popped in for a pint and to rest my weary legs. It’s always been a good rest-stop, in the middle of Soho, but I loved coming here in the evenings when it would be crowded and people would spill into the little courtyard outside. Literally spill. I remember coming here with friends in about 1996 and then going over to the Intrepid Fox across the street (best rock pub ever, now long gone, though the stone sign remains), and then on to the Hellfire Club on Oxford Street. You will notice all the union jack bunting all over the place. London was preparing for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, which was the following week, celebrating her millionth year on the throne, something like that. People were making a big deal about it. Thing is, I presume she had to get up from the throne occasionally, to go to the toilet or watch the racing, so it’s probably not 70 years continually sitting down.

Speaking of the Jubilee, I did do a quick sketch at Piccadilly Circus (you can see Lillywhites across the street, where I used to get football shirts, though the place gives me a headache now), and there are some of the big union flags that were all over London for the upcoming festivities. I didn’t bother finishing this drawing. I don’t really like Piccadilly Circus much. And so, this was my first big sketching-day in London for ages, and while I probably could have got more drawn, I did wander and explore a good bit too. The jetlag was kicking in, and it was time to head back to my mum’s for dinner.

(3) Camden Town, (4) Soho and (5) The City of London

July 27, 2020July 28, 2020Leave a comment

I may have spent too long in London on this virtual journey, not leaving space for some other places along the way – your Southamptons and your Swindons, your Leicesters and your Lutons – but in my defense I am from London, so I don’t mind being London-centric, and also I didn’t see anything I wanted to draw in those places, although if I went in real life undoubtedly I’d feel different, except in Luton. London is so big and diverse though, and I was still looking at places that meant a little to me. The next stop was in Camden Town, top left in this spread. This is Camden High Street, the point where the railway bridge crosses the famous Camden Market. Camden Lock itself is around the corner from here, where the Regents Canal cuts through on its way from Little Venice to the Docklands. I come out in Camden almost every time I come back to London, as it is easy for me to get to and all my old favourites are there, even if they aren’t really my favourites much any more. Many memorable (and a fair few unmemorable) nights out round here over the years, with the usual lads. A long time ago late nineties early noughties I used to go to the Mixer with my mate Tel and we’d play pool, or rather he would play pool and I would sit there watching him win game after game while I chatted to people. It’s what I like about the pubs in Camden, you always get a conversation. Not always an interesting one but you meet some characters. Me and my mate Roshe would always get into long drinky conversations with interesting people in Camden, like the fella we met from Sweden a couple of years ago late at the Hawley who was in London to take photos of the Cure. Camden has too many memories to count, but I still think it’s a mess. It’s supposed to be, long may it be.

Right that is enough of Camden, time to go into town and go to Soho. Northern Line maybe, or just jump on the bus, end up on Frith Street, go to get a coffee at Bar Italia. Now it must be pointed out, I don’t drink coffee, I don’t like it at all. Yet the only time I had a coffee drink that I liked was right here at Bar Italia, a cappuccino at about 3:30am, and admittedly it was in about 1996. That is in the twentieth century so yeah, it has been a while. You might know Bar Italia from the last song on Pulp’s Different Class. I used to come here for a little while back in the mid-nineties when I was briefly going out with a girl from Perugia, she worked at a Soho amusement arcade and we would usually meet up at midnight to go to clubs like St Moritz or the Wag, and then with some other Italian friends we’d go to Bar Italia while the sun was coming up, before I’d get my Night Bus back home to Burnt Oak from Trafalgar Square (often getting home and not even sleeping before heading into work at the Asda coffee shop next morning – I really had so much energy when I was twenty). That summer reminds me of 1996, the Euros, that Gareth Southgate penalty miss, seeing the Pistols at Finsbury Park with my uncle Billy, going to the Hellfire Club on Saturday nights with my friend Andrea from Hungary, working at Asda on weekends, and ending up at the end of the summer on a bus to Germany to spend a year which lasted three weeks. Memories that I’m pretty sure happened but all blend together like old posters pasted on top of each other on an old wall that was knocked down years ago. You know when memories of people and places vanish but jump out again in dreams years later? Time to leave that cappuccino behind in Bar Italia and get out of Soho now.

The final sketch in this spread is at Bank, right in the heart of the City of London. The City of London is its own thing, an area known as the Square Mile that has a degree of independence dating back to the twelfth century. Like, we in London distinguish “London” from “The City” but it’s a real distinction – you see statues of silver dragons marking the entrances into the City, it is managed by the Corporation and governed by the Lord Mayor, and if the reigning monarch wishes to enter the City they must attain permission from the Lord Mayor. They also have their own police force – Greater London has the Metropolitan Police, those bobbies from New Scotland Yard, but the Square Mile has the City of London Police, which have distinctively different police constable helmets with little crests on them. The location of this sketch is right next to the Bank of England (left) and Mansion House (unseen on the right), looking towards the Royal Exchange, and a whole load of skyscrapers, new ones going up all the time. This skyline has grown increasingly spiky since I left England, like the City is going through its experimental haircut phase. There’s an open-top bus. The thing this junction reminds me of most are my days as an open-top bus tour guide twenty years ago, I loved going through this are, so much to talk about, and on a weekend when there was no work traffic you had to get those facts out quick, no time for rambling. Mention the grasshopper on the weather vane, talk about the Lombard bankers, catch your breath because the Great Fire is coming up and then you’re at London Bridge. Of course if it’s Thursday afternoon and traffic is crawling you can really start telling stories.

From here, I probably should have moved beyond London on the virtual tour, to give myself a few more spots for your Blackburns and your Bradfords, your Warwicks and your Weymouths, but not wishing to appear North-London-centric I went east to Stratford, and then south-east to New Cross, then south to Tooting, before finally finding the road to Kent, like a Chaucerian wandering about lost, unable to read a map written in the French of Paris when all I know is the French of Stratford at Bow. Dammit I was saving that joke for the next post, not that anyone will understand it. All will be revealed, I’ll see you at Stratford Town Hall…

I sketched you in a bar down in old Soho

March 14, 20197 Comments

And so to the last night in England. It was an emotional trip, quick and busy, spent time with family, and friends, and places that I love. The last night there was just mine, all mine. I got back to Burnt Oak and watched old Alan Partridge shows on Netflix while packing my bag, never an easy task after even a short trip, what with all the various books (so many books) and new football shirts (more than one) and Cadbury’s cake bars and packs of Bisto gravy and Topic bars and whatever else I had to get. there was a lot I didn’t pick up. I didn’t get any Daddy’s Sauce, which I adore and am currently out of. For those who don’t know, Daddy’s is a brown sauce very similar to HP but less spicy and just tastes like home. I ate a Pot Noodle for dinner. I have not had a Pot Noodle for quite a long time. They seem a little less satisfying than I remember. I loved them when I was 14. I didn’t intend on ti being for dinner this time, but I left it a bit late to get much else when I finally finished packing my bag and venture back out into London one last time. I had a very early start the next morning and didn’t want to do any last-minute packing. So, I was along in London. I thought I might get some food and sketch an old pub. I wasn’t sure where I would go. London is vast and full of possibilities. I got off the train at Camden Town thinking, I could grab a curry at Masala Zone and then go up to sketch the Steele’s at Chalk Farm. But then at the last second I decided to jump back on the same tube because my head said, “you always go to Camden! Do that another time. London is yours!” So in the spirit of revisiting my youth, I got out at Tottenham Court Road instead. That was always my destination station whenever I would go into London as a teenager. It was right next to the Virgin Megastore – now long gone. It was also right next to the Hellfire Club, where as a 19-20 year old I would jump up and down to loud music with a group of international friends – also now long gone. In fact the station is completely different to the one from the 90s, having undergone a total transformation and rebuild in the past few years. All the old shortcuts are gone, and it’s a large, modern and open station now, not the cramped yellowing ticket hall of the past. I ended up not eating dinner, because I could not find somewhere that I fancied, and I wandered about Soho remembering all the old shortcuts that are thankfully still there. I passed by the Old Coffee House, a pub I have enjoyed a few fun evenings in with friends, one that I have tried to sketch before but at a time without pub-sketching confidence, and I saw through the window that there was a nice seat at the corner of the bar with a perfect panorama sketching view. That seat was mine. I would eat Dry Roasted Peanuts for dinner, hunger be damned.

You’ll need to click on the sketch at the top of this post to see it in closer detail (it’ll take you to the Flickr site). As I sketched, I tried a couple of different beers, supplied by a local brewer, Brodies. The first was the Piccadilly Pale Ale, the second and third were the Old Street Pale Ale. I did all the ink at the bar, but added the watercolour paint on the plane next morning (my Stillman & Birn ‘Alpha’ sketchbook being exactly the same width as my Virgin Atlantic economy seat). The bar staff were friendly, and the pub was chilled out. Oh except for the bar fight which broke out behind me. I have discovered that I can apparently sketch undisturbed while a bar fight happens around me, looking up occasionally before getting back to work. Now don’t imagine a long Wild-West style mass brawl, it was more of a few seconds of pushing before a quick “break it up, boys”. There was a group of lads out on a jolly, very drunk and celebrating some birthday or other. I say ‘very drunk’ but it was varying degrees of drunkenness, ranging from ‘friendly and convivial’ to ‘barely able to speak or stand’, with a range of performative drunkenness in between. Two of them for example were enacting a bullfight in the bar, another was sat down loudly singing to a couple of ladies (he was one of the louder ones, but actually he had a very good singing voice), and then one lad who would drunkenly go and sit with random people who would grin and nod a lot back before he sat down with the wrong group of people, one of whom got angry at something or other and they started scuffling, a glass broke, the drunken guy was whisked away and I turned to see one offended young man displaying the classic pose of “hold me back, hold me back”. I didn’t see much more because I was zen-posed with my sketchbook, working to a tight schedule, I had a plane to catch in the morning. The kerfuffles were quickly dealt with by the, I must say, very capable and calming pub staff, who’ve seen it all before I am sure. There was none of that macho make-it-all-worse strutting. The large partying group departed, the broken glass cleaned up, the “hold me back” guy went calmly back to his fresh pint, and the evening went on. I’ve always quite enjoyed this pub, in a little corner of Soho near Carnaby Street, and have been here many times with friends, going back to the 1990s, so I was glad to finally get a sketch of the place. Drawing a pub with lots of details inevitably means you get some wrong, and in this case I drew one too many frames on the wall above the main bar area. You won’t notice, of course. I also drew one person twice. He was standing at the bar waiting for a drink, and then afterwards he had his jacket off and was sat with a woman enjoying conversation. His hair somehow went from black to brown as well but I blame the lighting, not my urban sketching skills. The world is as you see it at that moment (and that of course can change by the third pint).

Seen through the window of a barbers in Soho. A popular night-time photo opportunity.

As it turns out it, I witnessed two bar fights that night. Typical London, you don’t see one for years and years and then two show up at once. On my way back to the station I popped into another old favourite, The Ship, for a quick pint of London Pride. As I was leaving, it seemed a ruck had broken out just outside between two people who had been in the pub, which was being broken apart by excited pub staff, and people were being directed away from it (so that they could stop and watch, as of course you would do). One rutting stag showed us the true meaning of “hold me back, hold me back”, and did some of the best “hold me back” moves I have ever seen, getting absolutely no fighting done whatsoever, while the main belligerent was drunkenly trying to pick up those metal poles that hold up barriers and swing it around like a broadsword. Maybe someone had asked if he wanted to go clubbing and his Google Translate had mis-google-translated. Security staff did that thing where they multiply, and both men were held back, and the audience started ambling off, as did I, because I had a plane to catch. An entertaining last night in London.

sketchcrawl in trafalgar square

August 5, 2016August 5, 20165 Comments

On Saturday July 23 I went along to the “Let’s Draw Trafalgar Square” sketchcrawl organized by members of Urban Sketchers London. It was a hot, sweaty day, and the Square was filled with people: tourists, buskers, and people playing Pokemon Go. By the way I love how Pokemon Go is the latest Thing-To-Be-Annoyed-At among the moaning classes, just the mention of the words ‘Pokemon’ and ‘Go’ automatically bring forth well-rehearsed stories of people walking in front of buses or just not looking up from their phones in the street, neither of which were things that ever happened before people started catching Porygons and Spearows just a few weeks ago. I bet if you had a referendum to ban people playing Pokemon Go you’d get more than half the population saying “Gotta ban em all!” Just let them be, grandad. Anyway, as I sat and sketched the National Gallery and the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a man on an unusual bike in front of me beckoned tourists to have a go and try to win ten quid from him. I didn’t sketch him. I did speak to a few tourists, giving directions and talking about the sketchcrawl. The crowds really did start getting a bit much, but I look at this stretch of pedestrianized goodness and I still remember how much of a coughing traffic mess it used to be. That right there is where I would get my Night Bus back to Burnt Oak in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, twenty years ago. It’s so much better now.

We met up at half-time by the column of the Grand Old Duke Of York, and the sketchcrawl’s numbers had swelled to include many more of the international sketchers who would soon go up to Manchester, including a large contingent from Singapore. So great to see so many familiar faces, such as Tia Boom Sim (Singapore), Omar Jaramillo (Berlin) and James Oses (London), and also meet many new ones I had only ever known from following online, such as Stephanie Bower (Seattle), Patrick Ng (Singapore) and Emma-Jane Rosenberg (Ely), and many others. Above though is not the Duke of York, rather this is King Charles I. He is holding a European flag, which is either a pro-Europe protest or the opposite, depending on your views of Charles, I guess. Look at all those Boris Buses milling about in the background there. The interior temperature of those buses was on that particular day hot enough to fry an egg (but to do that you needs to brexit first). No, I didn’t get it either. This statue by the way is the middle of London – all distances from London are measured from this spot. Charles was the shortest English king (well, the shortest adult English king). After his head was chopped off, just down the street from here, he was considerably shorter. Ok that is your history lesson done now. I sketched this while squashed against a wall next to Tesco Metro, itself a highly squashed experience, stood with paints balanced on elbow, while a large number of anti-Mugabe protesters from Zimbabwe paraded past, while tourists waved selfie-sticks in front of them, and absolutely nobody was playing Pokemon Go. Samuel Johnson said a couple of centuries ago that the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross, and he wasn’t wrong. I bet he would have hated Pokemon Go though. Imagine his face when you asked whether Jigglypuff, Blastoise, and Lickitung are in his dictionary! It would have caused him terrible pericombobulations.

I had to leave the Trafalgar-Squarea (tourists! This is a real term used by actual Londoners by the way so you should definitely say it next time you are there) and escape to the slightly less busy area of Cambridge Circus. Still a busy bustling Bedlam, but I was able to find a spot next to a pub and sketch the Palace Theatre, where currently they are showing the play about Harry Potter, call “The Cursed Child”. I just read the expensive hard-bound script, and I can reveal it is pretty good, and probably makes more a hell of a lot sense watching it on stage. Tickets are sold out for the next century and a half, and it’s in two parts, for some reason (I think the reason rhymes with the words “bunny bunny bunny”). I have wanted to sketch this theatre for ages, so the Potter connection gave me a good reason too (for example if I sell this sketch, then the reason may well rhyme with “honey honey honey”). I remember when Les Mis ran here for about six hundred years, or something. I sketched for an hour and added the colour at home, as I had to run down to St. Martin’s for the final meeting of the sketchcrawl, where everyone puts their books on the ground and looks down at them. It was a fun event and I am glad I went, a good sketching first day back in London, and I spent a good bit of time catching up and chatting with my fellow sketchers afterwards in the cafe in the crypt beneath St. Martin’s. By the way that cafe is the place to go when it is hot outside and you want a lukewarm fizzy drink. I did some sketching of the sketchers…

And afterwards I met my friend Roshan, and we went for dinner, then out for a nice relaxed beer in Covent Garden, being joined by other friends Lee and Jamie. I sketched them too. A couple siting next to us kooed over eagerly at my book while sketching, it seemed like they thought they might be next in the book, but alas my sketching energy needed conserving for the next day, when I would be sketching Wren’s London. Nice segue there into the next post, huh!

blue blue electric blue, that’s the colour of my room

January 11, 2016January 11, 20168 Comments

This is the Blue Posts pub in Soho. No, not that one, that’s on Berwick Street. No, not that other one, that’s down on Rupert Street. This is the one near Carnaby Street, on the corner of Kingly Street and Ganton Street. I sketched it a couple of days before Christmas, as the sky got dark early, and people rushed around getting last-minute Christmas presents. “Where is Hamleys?” they would ask me. I would tell them, and they would just run in the opposite direction without looking back. Here’s a pro tip – don’t go to Hamleys on a Saturday afternoon before Christmas and be on the top floor when all the escalators break down. Yes, we did that. Well on this particular Wednesday I had an afternoon to spend sketching (and shopping), so I came up to the craziness of the Regents Street end of Soho and found the Blue Posts pub. This particualr Blue Posts pub anyway. I’ve sketched the one on Berwick Street, and the one on Rupert Street is on my must-sketch list, but this is a nice pub, and I’d had the pleasure of coming in here the Saturday evening prior. That night I had been out with a few friends at a pub on Beak Street called the Old Coffee House, which I did not sketch. Two of them had not yet seen The Force Awakens, while me and my other friend Roshan had been to see it the day before. When you see The Force Awakens, you want to talk about it, but we couldn’t, for the whole evening. Oh we had a great time talking about comics, but the Star-Wars-talk was just busting to come out. So when the other two had left, Roshan and I went to the Blue Posts, as it was open later, to finally talk theories and spoilers. It was packed, so we stood by the bar, where we met a man who was in a similar predicament. However he had promised to keep his mouth zipped, because unfortunately the barman at the Blue Posts, a lovely chap, had not seen it, and any Force-based chat was again off-limits. Dammit! Respecting the fact that the universe was still inhabited by people who did not know that [SPOILERS EDITED OUT!] and that [SPOILERS!] is in fact [SPOILERS!] who [SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!], we kept quiet and talked comics (we had no problem spoiling those). So when I came back to sketch the pub a few days later, I popped in to see if the barman had seen Force Awakens yet, but alas I couldn’t find him. Now it is January, there really is no excuse, so next time I go back it will be in the full Kylo Ren costume, exclaiming loudly that [SPOIIIILLLLLERRRRSSSSSS-LALALA-NOTLISTENINGGGGG]. I won’t discuss the film here, not right now anyway, except to say that it was awesome, amazing, beautiful, and that I am totally on Team Rey, but that I do miss George Lucas’s storytelling. Anyway, the Blue Posts. I think I have mentioned before the fact that in centuries past Soho was a hunting ground? Well, it was, before all the buildings, before all the clubs and bars and strip joins and hang on they are hunting grounds too, of a sort. Well, those royal hunting grounds were bordered with blue posts, which is (we think) why several pubs take their names from them. There is another Blue Posts pub in Mayfair, not too far from here. You can make out the bright pink lights strung above Ganton Street on the right, as well as the large metal banner marking the entrance to the Carnaby Street shopping zone, which I photographed below I would love to sketch a panorama of Carnaby Street some day, but only if that day is actually about twenty or thirty years ago, when it was still interesting. It doesn’t even have Soccerscene any more, the once great football shirt shop that I spent too many hours in in my youth, where I fell in love with the Sampdoria shirt, the Fluminense shirt, the 1991 CIS shirt (the red one with the little squares and lines on it), and all the metal badges. Back then the shops were all punk t-shirts and Bowie and leather and loud music. These days it’s all Muji and Puma and mobile phone shops. But it does have beautiful Christmas lights.

Well, it’s now 2016, January 10th, and I’m writing an hour or so since I learned that David Bowie, that cosmic super-being, has died aged 69. I’m stunned. He was a hero of mine since I was a kid, there’s never been a part of my life when I didn’t hear his music, and now he’s gone. I just want to say rest in peace, Mr. Bowie. Give our regards to the cosmos.

down in old soho

June 28, 20159 Comments

I would love to draw the whole of Soho, if that’s possible. Like every single block. And I kind of want to do it immediately because it’s changing, year after year, but then it always has done. Centuries ago this was a hunting ground (“So-ho!” was a hunting cry, like “Tally-ho!”), its borders marked with blue posts (hence the two pubs called ‘The Blue Posts’, and when I was a guide on the open-top buses I used to wheel out the old chestnuts about it “still being a hunting ground, know wot I mean”, but I’m not even sure wot I mean now. In my 500-miles-away-ness in California, I’ve been concerned about pubs and other famous London landmarks closing down or disappearing, and I’ve been eager to record these narrow streets while they are still here. Above, Greek Street, at the junction with Romilly Street. Greek Street was so named because of a Greek church nearby, and former residents include the very same Giacomo Casanova. On the far left, past the Prince’s Theatre on Old Compton Street, is a Michelin-starred restaurant called L’Escargot, where a long time ago a friend of mine worked for a week before quitting. I recall it being a much funnier story at the time. The timber-framed pub is the Three Greyhounds, another name reminiscent of the royal hunting ground days, while the patisserie in blue is the Maison Bertaux, which has served tea and cakes since 1871. On the corner is the Coach and Horses pub, also known as ‘Norman’s’ (after the infamous long-standing landlord Norman Balon, who claimed to be the rudest landlord in London). This pub has a good claim to being Soho’s most famous, a haunt of well known writers and actors such as Peter O’Toole, Jeffrey Barnard (he of ‘Unwell’ fame), it’s about as Proper an old Soho Drinker as it’s possible to get. Further down on the right Romilly Street leads to Cambridge Circus, at the junction of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.

For those of you who haven’t gathered by now, I am talking about Soho in London, not the one in New York, which is a contraction of the words “South of Houston”. Our Soho as I always told people is named for “South of Hoxford Street” of course, with ‘Hoxford’ over time becoming ‘Oxford’ due to the predilection of London English speakers to drop the ‘h’. No, not really. One of the thoroughfares that really defines Soho is Old Compton Street. Old Compton is well-known for its gay community, and in centuries past it was populated by the French Huguenots; there are still several French-themed places in the area. Above we see some of Soho’s other European residents, with the Spanish tapas restaurant Cafe Espana located next to an Italian deli. ‘I Camisa & Son’. I do love an Italian Deli.

And here is the map, showing where I sketched…

back in the ship

June 25, 20155 Comments

London! This explains my recent blog-absence, I have been travelling back to Europe. Not just to London, but to France as well, where I did a great many sketches, most of which were in Strasbourg at the 2015 “Rencontre Nationale” of Urban Sketchers France – more on that fun later. But London, it’s always a pleasure to come home, and it’s always so brief. I came back to surprise my dad for his birthday, which was fun, and we had a nice family get-together. On the second day, I went down into central London and took my mum to afternoon tea at Fortnum and Mason. It was pretty posh. Afterwards though we popped into The Ship, my favourite pub on Wardour Street, where I did this sketch above. I have sketched outside The Ship before (see left), but this was my first interior. I always liked this pub’s unchanging, yellowy, old-fashioned interior, so was surprised to find that it has been ‘done up’. Not demolished and converted into a gourmet burger restaurant or luggage store like everywhere else, in fact the interior hasn’t really changed much at all, except it has been nicely repainted and cleaned up considerably. It is still very much The Ship, just smarter. My mum took a picture of me sketching it, in case you wondered what I look like when I sketch a pub (what did you expect?). It was great to be back in London.